Lady in Red, Eliza Knight [have you read this book TXT] 📗

the idea, for it was extremely improper, but one dithering look from his master, and he’d clamped his lips closed and nodded.

Terrence grinned as he observed James step from behind the row of tall shrubs positioned before his iron fence in front of his London townhouse. James gently pressed his fingers to the lady’s elbow. She stared at the valet, startled.

Lord, she was beautiful. Achingly so.

Dark, curling lashes framed her blue eyes. As innocent as she tried to look, Terrence knew just how calculating she could be. A rosy flush covered her creamy cheeks, and James didn’t let go when her delicate nose turned up at him and demanded that he release her. Her pouty pink lips let loose several blistering words in Terrence’s valet’s direction.

As instructed, James tugged her through the gate and up the marble stairs.

Terrence’s heart kicked up its pace, and a prickle of chill swept up his spine. If it weren’t seven in the morning, he might like a glass of whisky. To hell with it. He poured himself two-fingers into a tumbler and downed it before a tap sounded at his library door.

This was it. Behind the wide oak double doors was the woman he’d spent an agonizing amount of time thinking about. Cursing her. Loving her.

Blast it all, she was his undoing.

“Enter,” he said, surprised at the sturdiness in his voice. Setting down his glass, he went to stand casually beside the fireplace, his elbow resting on the mantle. Why yes, a casual stance such as this would not let her realize what she’d done to him.

He hadn’t seen Elizabeth Stuart in two years. Scottish hellion that she was. She’d clawed her way into his heart and then ripped it out.

A bead of sweat trickled from his temple, and he cleared his throat.

The door swung open, revealing James and Elizabeth.

Good God, his wife was still just as enchanting. Her hair was swept up, no doubt a pile of riotous chocolate curls beneath the fated hat. Eyes wide and bluer than he remembered: the color of sapphires and how they sparkled with enticement. The moment James had grasped her arm, she’d known what would happen. Had to have been expecting him, but still, there was a look of surprise on her face that left Terrence momentarily tongue-tied.

“My lord,” James said, keeping to his formalities. “The Lady Shaftesbury is here to see you.”

Terrence watched his wife, Elizabeth, with her plush lips pressed into a thin white line, dip into a curtsy, lowering her hot gaze from his face to his feet. The gown she wore was plain gray and worn. Not at all the gown of a countess, but rather a governess—or worse yet, a housekeeper. He frowned at the coarseness of the fabric of her skirts and the out-of-date bodice, the threadbare hem and fabric about the sleeves. What had happened over the last two years when she’d disappeared from his life? She should be wearing clothes that made women in the height of fashion swoon with jealousy.

“That will be all, James,” Terrence said, his voice gruff.

The valet crept from the room, closing the door silently behind him. Elizabeth stood not six feet away. She didn’t look at him, her eyes still lowered to the floor.

Two years.

He should be full of rage, ranting at her, but instead, he could barely find his voice. When she’d disappeared, he’d feared her dead. Had sent men out to look for her. He had spent countless days and weeks searching. Even so far as to travel north to Scotland, in hopes she’d simply run home to her family. But they had not heard from her either.

“You’ve had quite a lengthy trip to the milliner’s shop.” Terrence thought he sounded rather clever for that one.

The morning she’d disappeared, Elizabeth had told him she was going to see the hat maker about commissioning an equally charming hat to the red one he’d gifted her, this time in blue. She’d never returned.

Elizabeth was no longer staring at the floor, but she was also not looking at him. Her hands wrung before her as her gaze darted about.

“Husband,” she murmured, so low that he couldn’t surmise her emotion.

Husband. God, how he’d missed the sound of her Scottish lilt, the way her lips formed words. The desire that pulsed through him whenever she spoke. Husband. The title was not one he’d forgotten and hearing it on her lips only left him bereft.

2

“Is that all the greeting I deserve?” Frustration lanced through Terrence.

Husband. Not even a bloody apology for being gone to the hat shop for two years, which he had once considered to be the very least of what she could say.

Elizabeth’s gaze jerked up, anger, raw and potent, in her startling blues. “What did ye expect?”

More than she was willing to give, he supposed. “An explanation. A decent one.”

Fear flashed in her eyes, which shifted from side to side, along with her stance. She wrung her hands so hard that he was certain her knuckles beneath would match the color of her white gloves. What was she hiding?

Elizabeth shook her head. The rise and fall of her chest increased, her breasts pushed tight to the gown she wore, showing off the ample bosom he could draw from memory. Terrence shifted his gaze up, staring at her throat. He swore he saw the veins in her neck pulsing in time with her rapid heartbeat.

“Come now, do you not owe me that much?” he asked, trying for a softer tone.

“That, I…” She swallowed hard. “I canna give ye that.”

Terrence kept his face empty of emotion, though inside his stomach twisted as if he’d been gutted. He’d been in love with her ever since he’d nearly run her over in Hyde Park with his horse.

Gray had covered that morning, like most mornings in London. A haze filled the air. He’d gone out just after dawn to ride in the park, annoyed about something that he had to take up in the House of Lords. He’d